Stung
I guess I knew it would happen eventually, but I was more surprised than I expected to be when I finally got stung by a bee today. It landed on my foot and when I took a step it got caught between the straps of my sandal (I know, I know – I should not wear sandals to work with bees! Not even with heavy socks, which I now know are not enough to keep them out). It panicked and stung me on my little toe and it hurt like a mutha. It still hurts!
I've had bee stings before, in the long distant past, but I'd forgotten just how much they hurt. I didn't freak out or scream or anything, though – I didn't want to be a baby, or draw any undue attention to myself – so I just sort of calmly murmured, "Hmm, I just got stung." I reached down and tried to flick the bee away, but it was still all upset and struggling, and had just had its stinger and guts ripped out, and would not or could not go away. Instead, it sort of fainted and fell down into the bottom of my shoe.
This is where I wish our bee guy had been paying more attention – or maybe he doesn't know this himself – or maybe because I wasn't screaming he didn't think it was any big deal – but anyway, I wish someone had told me what to do, because in the absence of any instructions, and knowing that it wasn't going to be able to sting me again, what I decided to do was to just tough it out and keep working, and deal with the sting and the dead bee body later. That was a mistake.
Why didn't I just stop and take care of myself?
First, because I didn't think the stinger was still in there. I'd seen stingers with the attached venom sac before, when bees had stung my leather gloves, and I didn't see anything like that on my toe. Second, I guess I was thinking of a stinger as being something like a splinter, which it is not. A splinter needs to be removed, but if you can't do it right this very second, it's usually not a big deal. A bee's stinger, on the other hand, is designed to continue injecting venom for up to twenty minutes after it's ripped from the bee's body, so the longer it stays in, the more your sting is going to hurt. Third, and probably most important, I felt insulted by the bee, and embarrassed that I was the one it had chosen to sting, and I didn't want to draw any more attention to my humiliation by making a visible fuss about it. Better to act like everything was okay, and take care of it later, when I could inspect the damage in private.
So silly! To take a bee sting personally. Like I wanted the bee guy to think the bees liked me so much they would never sting me? Hmm.
What I should have done, and what I think the bee guy should have told me, was to stop what I was doing the second I got stung, walk away from the hive, remove the stinger, and treat the sting immediately. Instead, I waited another hour and a half before I did anything for it, and now – about nine hours later – my toe is swollen and mottled all red and purple and white, and it's totally throbbing and aching like hell. I have ice on it, and took a benadryl, and I'm sure it's going to be fine. But man. Why didn't he let me know it's better to take care of it right away?
Why didn't I do a little more research myself before walking up to an active beehive wearing ridiculous shoes?
Well, that's what I'm doing now. Research and preparation. I've been meaning to get some proper work boots ever since my old ancient pair bit the dust last winter; now I have a compelling reason to finally get around to it. When we go back for harvesting and extracting again in a couple of weeks, I will be ready to roll.
Funny that I don't blame the bees. They're so beautiful and interesting and industrious, and they're right – our activities in their hive are a threat to them. I personally killed probably at least 15 of them in the course of moving things around this morning, not counting the one that lost its life by stinging me, and the larvae I had to smash to clean the frames. It's unavoidable. There are just so many of them, and you can never get them all out of the way before you have to set something down again. Plus, we take their honey! If I get stung by one bee out of thousands, I can forgive that.
P.S. Mr. A got stung today too, on the end of his nose, an hour after I did, while repairing the solar well pump. He brushed his stinger out immediately, and now it doesn't hurt at all anymore. Good to know.
I've had bee stings before, in the long distant past, but I'd forgotten just how much they hurt. I didn't freak out or scream or anything, though – I didn't want to be a baby, or draw any undue attention to myself – so I just sort of calmly murmured, "Hmm, I just got stung." I reached down and tried to flick the bee away, but it was still all upset and struggling, and had just had its stinger and guts ripped out, and would not or could not go away. Instead, it sort of fainted and fell down into the bottom of my shoe.
This is where I wish our bee guy had been paying more attention – or maybe he doesn't know this himself – or maybe because I wasn't screaming he didn't think it was any big deal – but anyway, I wish someone had told me what to do, because in the absence of any instructions, and knowing that it wasn't going to be able to sting me again, what I decided to do was to just tough it out and keep working, and deal with the sting and the dead bee body later. That was a mistake.
Why didn't I just stop and take care of myself?
First, because I didn't think the stinger was still in there. I'd seen stingers with the attached venom sac before, when bees had stung my leather gloves, and I didn't see anything like that on my toe. Second, I guess I was thinking of a stinger as being something like a splinter, which it is not. A splinter needs to be removed, but if you can't do it right this very second, it's usually not a big deal. A bee's stinger, on the other hand, is designed to continue injecting venom for up to twenty minutes after it's ripped from the bee's body, so the longer it stays in, the more your sting is going to hurt. Third, and probably most important, I felt insulted by the bee, and embarrassed that I was the one it had chosen to sting, and I didn't want to draw any more attention to my humiliation by making a visible fuss about it. Better to act like everything was okay, and take care of it later, when I could inspect the damage in private.
So silly! To take a bee sting personally. Like I wanted the bee guy to think the bees liked me so much they would never sting me? Hmm.
What I should have done, and what I think the bee guy should have told me, was to stop what I was doing the second I got stung, walk away from the hive, remove the stinger, and treat the sting immediately. Instead, I waited another hour and a half before I did anything for it, and now – about nine hours later – my toe is swollen and mottled all red and purple and white, and it's totally throbbing and aching like hell. I have ice on it, and took a benadryl, and I'm sure it's going to be fine. But man. Why didn't he let me know it's better to take care of it right away?
Why didn't I do a little more research myself before walking up to an active beehive wearing ridiculous shoes?
Well, that's what I'm doing now. Research and preparation. I've been meaning to get some proper work boots ever since my old ancient pair bit the dust last winter; now I have a compelling reason to finally get around to it. When we go back for harvesting and extracting again in a couple of weeks, I will be ready to roll.
Funny that I don't blame the bees. They're so beautiful and interesting and industrious, and they're right – our activities in their hive are a threat to them. I personally killed probably at least 15 of them in the course of moving things around this morning, not counting the one that lost its life by stinging me, and the larvae I had to smash to clean the frames. It's unavoidable. There are just so many of them, and you can never get them all out of the way before you have to set something down again. Plus, we take their honey! If I get stung by one bee out of thousands, I can forgive that.
P.S. Mr. A got stung today too, on the end of his nose, an hour after I did, while repairing the solar well pump. He brushed his stinger out immediately, and now it doesn't hurt at all anymore. Good to know.
2 Comments:
Sorry you got stung!
But thanks for the info about what to do if stung. I didn't know that the stinger continued to pump venom into you after the fact. Horrifying.
I hope the pain is subsiding.
I didn't know that about the venom, either, but my daughter got stung by a bee two weeks ago in Utah and once this past week in upstate New York. She screamed in Utah and violently sobbed for quite some time. We did take the stinger out. And now I'm glad we did. It's hard to ignore a little kid who's just been stung, though. Maybe you should channel your inner child in these instances. I
Post a Comment
<< Home